trees are growing

by Ivan Akhmetyev
     translated by J. Kates

* * *

trees are growing
beasts are alive
i think
God is

* * *

in my soul there is
a child and an old man

 

the old man needs rest

the child a caress

* * *

fake christmas trees are good
what a pity though
they don’t shed their needles

* * *

in winter you can’t tell
living trees
from dead ones

* * *

who does better at one thing
does worse at another

* * *

where we are hurried off to
nowhere we need to hurry
I never hurry

* * *

it’s in reality
we forget our dreams

and dreaming
we remember them all

wonderful!
all our dreams
are preserved

* * *

i am a master
of russian speech
(as much
as everyone)

* * *

that’s the way i write
there’s no other way i can
that’s the way i can
there’s no other way i write

* * *

don’t be afraid
it’s nothing at all but
a collision of words

* * *

my poems
are very simple
i have already
written many of them

* * *

“i write little
but unlike anyone else”
my mother said
“don’t boast
maybe you will write like others
but more”

* * *

good poems
don’t cancel out
other good poems

* * *

such poems
are contagious

you not only
remember them
but you start
to write your own

* * *

like Michelangelo
when i peel a potato
i remove what’s superfluous

* * *

Khlebnikov is our father
Kharms is our teacher
Christ our Savior

* * *

the avant-garde
is a garden of stones
only who hasn’t been throwing
his own pebble
into this one

* * *

don’t look at this
it’s for me

* * *

a new word
i can make use of
or not
but already there is nowhere
to get away from it

* * *

writing in the dark
i didn’t notice
the pen doesn’t work